Just to be clear…what are you trying to say? Are you trying to make a joke?
Yeah, a sarcastic response basically
Ah, in that case you might have troubles with the sarcasm getting across in the first place, but I wouldn’t use ありがとう if I were you if you’re going to redirect. (いえいえ、)そちらこそ is what I would say personally.
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Yeah, I think this is going to be your problem. Unless your Japanese is good enough that (a) you aren’t getting 日本語上手’d in the first place and (b) you don’t need to ask here about how to make sarcastic comebacks, it is much more likely that your listener will assume you’re confused or making a language error than that they will correctly interpret you as being sarcastic.
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Haha, I don’t plan to actually use it so no worries on that front. It’s just a hypothetical
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Building on this, it’s typical in Japanese (even when you’re not aiming for sarcasm) that when you recieve a compliment, you should deflect (いいえ) rather than accept (ありがとう).
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I prefer the 3-in-1 hidden S-class move:
いいえ、褒めても何もありがたくないよ。
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ことを vs ことが
Which one is what and why?
My hunch: ことを is talking about an experience as an object of an action, and ことが is the ability or desire of an action. Basically the difference between が and を with こと involved.
Am I right?
It’s just こと with a particle after it, is there a specific example you had in mind? I don’t know if you can make any general statements about those pairings any more than you could for like 人を and 人が
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Ok, so what I suspected. I just wasn’t sure if there was something else going on. I guess some examples would be:
走ることが出来ます。
走ることを辞める。
走ることが好きです。
走ることを勉強する。
(Don’t ask me why I picked running)
Oh, I think I see. Yeah those ga and wo can be thought of separately from koto.
For example, I can just remove it and put some other noun and the sentences work
英語ができる
英語を辞める
英語が好き
英語を勉強する
The を and が are more dependent on what comes after it, I would say.
For potential, が is typical. This one trips learners up. を places more emphasis on the verb which you usually don’t want to do.
For 辞める it’s going to be を to mark what is being quit
For 好き it can be either, but が is typical again. The only exception is を好きになる where を becomes typical. を is more often used just to make the sentence more clear ime, and I don’t think you need to worry about using it yourself.
For 勉強する again it just takes を to mark what you’re studying. の勉強をする is also OK, but this is still を
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Yeah I just did a crash course on は vs が, が vs を, and に vs で so I feel like all these years of just kind of guessing which one is right is finally over. I just wanted to see if the same thing applied for こと since i couldn’t find anything online indicating there was a specific use case for either.
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It more depends on what the role of the thing before and after こと is. をｖｓが would be transitive verb vs intransitive verb after, respectively.
で sets context or means of doing something. Etc.
お二人の日本語は、日本人にちゃんと伝わるように、興味を持ってもらえるように考えて話されてるから、良いのでしょう。
Can someone help me translate? Context: Two foreigners were speaking Japanese in a video and a Japanese person wrote the above about them in the comments section.
Their Japanese is good because they’re thinking and talking in a way that has an interest and properly conveying to Japanese people? I feel like I’m very off here.
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It’s not even a Japanese question, I don’t think, but it’s grammar:
When would you ever use ことにする in present/future tense?
Would you use it in the case of “tomorrow I will decide”?
明日、行くことにする
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IIRC, you use ことにする in non-past tense for decisions you’ve already made too, not for decisions you have yet to make. So 明日、行くことにする would mean you’ve already decided you’re going to go tomorrow, if my understanding is correct.
This HiNative answer suggests the tense is determined by when the thing you decided on takes place.
EDIT: From what I’m seeing here and there, if you want to specifically say you’re going to decide on something in the future, you’d use 決める, probably with an embedded question. So for instance 行くかどうか明日決める would mean you’re deciding tomorrow whether you’re going or not (I’m not sure how natural that is though).
I’ve even seen both combined, like どちらにするか決める to mean “decide which to choose”
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The GENKI exercise I was doing was talking about the students in Mary’s class and what they are going to do after graduation. So while the decision itself was in the past, the action they’re going to take is in the future.
Sentences went:
[task in dictionary form] + ことにしました
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My Google-fu is failing me, unfortunately… Can’t find anything other than that one HiNative answer about specifically when to use the past tense and what that implies. Example sentences don’t really clarify much on that either, they seem pretty arbitrary on when to use past vs non-past.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me will be along shortly to shed some light on the matter
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Yeah I’m probably just massively over thinking it, but as you pointed out 決める seems like a more natural verb to use for future decisions.
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Google found me a use in a TV drama plot summary:
太郎は長崎へチロリを届けに行くことにするが、そんな時、森村から呼び出される。
which I interpret as the same kind of present tense narration that you can use in that kind of situation in English: “Tarou decides to deliver the sake jug to Nagasaki, but then he is summoned by Morimura.”
Similarly from a different drama episode synopsis:
柊子はなりゆきで章吾と遊園地デートに行くことにするが、そこで美羽と透にバッタリ出会って気まずい雰囲気になる。
Or you might just be writing something in present tense, like this extract from a restaurant review:
でも入口のメニューを見て悩む．．． お子様メニューは充実しているのだが、大人が食うようなものが無い．．． 諦めてまたエンジョイドームのカフェテリアに行くことにする …
There’s also questions, like さて、京都に行くことにするか where the decision is not yet made (“well, shall I go to Kyoto?”)
I think you should also be able to use it when you’re announcing a decision you’re making right at that moment (“Well, if that’s the case then I’ll go to Tokyo on Friday”) but I couldn’t find any examples of that in my quick search.
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